The new curriculum has one very significant implication: TOK is about exploring how knowledge is BUILT or ENGINEERED.

This building happens on a PERSONAL level – we discover things about ourselves and our world all the time through our own individual ways and means.

But we do not do this in isolation. There is a CONTEXT. This comes from an edifice of data or source material we have to sift through (books; internet; verbal lore); a host of influences (parental, peer group, teachers, community leaders…) that shape what we know and the experts who build on the learning and knowledge of each other…

So knowledge is also built on a COLLABORATIVE level – we discover things by SHARING data, ideas, methods and technology.

So think of yourself as someone who is constantly building knowledge and never simply accepting someone else’s knowledge without question. This attitude helps to refine and strengthen the foundations of your knowledge.

How the Knowledge Framework looks

Take any AOK – Ethics – and explore how knowledge is constructed within this field.

This is done by tracing the genesis of your ethical knowledge in FIVE different ways – the new Guide calls this a ‘knowledge framework’.

Links to personal knowledge:

· our sense of right and wrong tends to come from our parents (usually transmitted through their religion, if they have one)

· emotion and perception largely shapes how we know the difference between good and bad eg. Hand in the fire hurts; smoking is harmful

· we create and test moral boundaries by exposure to our parents’ experiences and making our own mistakes

· our ethical behaviour grows as we begin to see ourselves within a wider social network from family, friends, community to society and interact independently within each of these rule-based frameworks

My Second Book On Student Motivation!

My Second Book On Teaching ELLs

My book, "The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide: Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools, and Activities for Teaching English Language Learners of All Levels," (co-authored by Katie Hull Sypnieski) was published in the Summer of 2012